The Next Best Thing To Him Being There
by SwoopingDragon
Summary: A one-shot showing Dean struggling to cope with Cas' death after he disappears into the water reservoir. Takes place in early season 7, spoilers for season 6 finale.


At nearly three in the morning they pull into the Imperial Palace Motel. It's neither imperial nor palatial, but that's never stopped them before. It has two beds and at least pretends that the last people to stay here had been clean and respectable, so it's nicer than a solid half of the places the boys have stayed. Nice and homey.

After using a stolen credit card to book a room for the night from the half-asleep desk worker in the lobby, Sam and Dean enter the room, place their customary devil's trap patterned rug in front of the door, and collapse into bed. Normally they'd at least say something before dropping off, Sam asking Dean if there was something he wanted to talk about and Dean snarking back that he hopes li'l Sammy's visit to dreamland goes okay. There's none of that tonight. Dean groggily notices Sam pressing hard against the half-healed cut on his hand with his thumb. _So, Satan's still riding you hard. Best of luck getting some sleep, Sammy,_ Dean thinks, not even bothering to take his jeans off before pulling the covers over himself and dropping off to sleep. He's had so little sleep lately...

After what only seems like a few seconds, Dean reawakens. The room is still dark, shadows making its tacky floral pattern only slightly less offensive. Sam is snoring loudly next to him, limbs stretched to cover the entire bed, feet sticking slightly off the end. Dean snorts. _No matter how many times I've seen Sammy not fit into a bed, it never gets old. Crowley may be a son-of-a-bitch of the highest degree, but he just might have a point with his nicknames._

Grunting discontentedly, Dean reaches over and bangs on the light button on his nightstand's clock a little harder than absolutely necessary. _5:43. Almost three hours of sleep. Awesome._ He briefly considers rolling over and trying to doze off again, but he quickly realizes it is to no avail. It's quiet here, before morning really starts, quiet enough that there's nothing to hear but his thoughts. Those are noisy enough that he knows he'll never get to sleep.

There's nothing else for it. Moving quietly so as not to wake Sammy, Dean pushes the comforter off himself and eases the door open, bare feet padding across the concrete of the parking lot to the impala. He reaches into his pocket, unlocks the car, and after pausing a moment, opens the trunk. In the back, behind the few bags that hold all the clothing and sparse other possessions to the Winchester name, Dean feels it, smooth to the touch, slightly cold from sitting in the unheated trunk for most of the night.

Gripping it tightly in his fingers as if the angel still wore it, Dean pulls Cas' trenchcoat from where he had neatly folded it in the corner of the trunk. Dean does a quick look around to make sure no one was watching. You never know, once Sammy had woken up in the middle of the night and almost caught him. Dean had been forced to make something up about doing a midnight weapons check, since "You never know when those demons are going to show, right, Sammy?" He'd been able to tell Sam didn't really believe it, but at least he didn't argue, just nodded and went back to sleep with a look that made Dean uncomfortable.

After he feels secure that he really is alone, Dean pullsthe trenchcoat out of the Impala in full, shakes it out to see all of it. There is is, like nothing has changed, like Cas has just decided to take it off for a minute, not that Dean had seen the angel without that damn coat more than a time or two. And now- now he never would again. _Can't have the angel without the coat, so I'll have to make do with the coat without the angel._

Clenching his jaw, Dean brings the trenchcoat up to his face, burying himself in it. He breathes in deeply. It's a little musty, an effect of the long bath in reservoir water it had gotten before he'd saved it from where it lay drowning, but Dean sure as hell isn't going to throw it in the washing machine. To get rid of the musty smell would mean getting rid of the other smell it had, a smell that was just so incredibly _Cas_ that Dean could never stand to get rid of it. Closing his eyes and inhaling deeply, Dean can almost pretend that Cas is standing in front of him, ignoring their rules about personal space like he always did. Dean hadn't really minded, not that he had ever told the angel. There's so much he never told him.

He'd had so many chances, so damn many opportunities to tell Cas that he mattered, that he cared about him, that he was there for him. He hadn't taken any of them, and he wonders for what feels like the thousandth time if he could have talked Cas down from taking in all those souls, from betraying him. If he'd just been there, maybe-

He breaks off that train of thought. He'd been down that road too many times before, and it never ended anywhere different. He'd never know, since he hadn't been there, hadn't been ready to listen. It's harder to blame the man now that he's- it hurts too much to say dead even in his own mind- gone.

Sitting on the concrete to lean back on the impala, Dean holds the coat to his face and cries, letting free all the tears he would never shed in light of day, with Bobby and his brother breathing down his neck at all hours as if to look for signs of cracking. They're too late anyhow, there are no cracks to be found because he's already shattered, pieces strewn all over the ground where there's no one there to touch them on the forehead and magically put it all back together.

Dean sits and cries, the increasing dampness of the coat reminding him of how it had come into his possession, water dripping back into the pool that had claimed the literal angel he had never gotten the chance to figure out his feelings toward.

He falls asleep like that, head resting on the balled up trenchcoat like a pillow, waking with a start hours later when Sam shakes him gently.

"Dean? Bed not soft enough for you?"

Throwing the trenchcoat to the ground with a curse, Dean blinks in the blinding light of morning. "The radiator was giving me a headache." Sam gives him that look again, not buying it. Dean stands up and throws the coat back into the trunk as casually as he can, not even turning to it. "So, what are we hunting today?"

As Sam sighs and heads back inside to pack up his laptop and carefully comb his mane, Dean hangs back a moment. Carefully, he folds the trenchcoat before placing it almost reverently back in its spot in the corner of the trunk.

_Gotta take good care of what I've got left._


End file.
